The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for manipulating and steering of laser beams from fiber-optic arrays. More specifically, the present invention provides a method and apparatus that controls the phase of the individual laser beams by controlling the pump power of the fiber amplifiers associated with each beam.
The ability to steer beams emerging from fiber optic arrays has become important in a variety of fields, including communications and certain tracking and targeting technologies. New applications for fiber optics in these and related fields frequently require high phase coherence and directional accuracy. Presently, the methods used for steering fiber optic beams require additional mechanical and/or optical elements over and above the fiber laser system itself. These additional elements tend to be prohibitively expensive. Mechanical systems in particular, which utilize adaptive reflectors and/or refractors, tend to be difficult to construct and are limited in function by weight and inertia restrictions.
Several approaches have been proposed for overcoming the limits of the mechanically based beam steering systems, including phase conjugation, phase control via piezoelectric drivers, and phase control via electro-optics devices. One such approach for a fiber optic array uses optically phased arrays employing a large number of light emitters and optical phase delays between adjacent emitters to steer and focus an optical beam generated from the contributions of all the light emitters. Optical waveguides can be used to produce the phase delays, and the needed phase delays can thus be effected by piezoelectric or electro-optic effects in the waveguides. However, as noted above, this approach requires the inclusion of the necessary piezoelectric or electro-optic components, which drives up costs and complexity of fabrication of the array. Additional complexity and significant insertion loss also result because the light must be directed out of the fiber and into the waveguides, and then back into either the fibers or collimated for free space propagation.
Other approaches to beam steering involve the use of phase-active liquid crystals. Such systems confine the liquid crystals between optical elements and utilize the effects of electrical fields on the crystals to create a variety of optical components. By varying the electric field, the optical properties of the component can be modified. However, modification of these devices"" optical properties, particularly in more than one dimension, requires complex adjustments the electrical field. Presently, liquid crystals are also limited in speed of response or phase excursion. Furthermore, as in the previous approaches, the complexity and cost of incorporating liquid crystal elements into a fiber array system are significantly higher than the present invention, which does not require any additional optical components.
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for effectively controlling the phase of an array of amplifying fibers that is low cost, simple, and does not require additional optical mechanical and optical elements beyond the laser system itself. This invention takes advantage of the ability of electromagnetic radiation such as provided by amplifier pumps to create changes in fiber properties such as temperature, which in turn can create phase shifts in the emitted light from the fibers without additional optical components.
In its preferred embodiment, the present invention provides a fiber amplifier array wherein a coherent source of radiation is provided to a plurality of fibers, and each of the amplified fibers has an independent source of pump light. The pump light can be modulated to introduce phase shifts in the light emitted from the fibers. The resulting output can then be provided back to the individual pumping sources in a feedback loop to permit control of the phasing and thus allow steering of the output from the entire array.